Tenant Co-Op.

Basically, its anarcho-syndicalism, but applied to a building a bunch of people live in, instesd of a productive enterprise.

You can have a building where the people who live in the building pay rent as basically a tax, where other people who live in the building basically vote on who is charge of actually doing property management duties.

The building and its inhabitants are its own little self-sealed governmental unit, to some extent. Collectively, they own the building, collectively, they are responsible for it, and for making sure codes aren't violated and taxes are paid to the government, etc.

The non bullshit version of an HOA, you might call it.

These are legally possible in many, many parts of the world. They just aren't popular ... largely because the first step of doing this is buying out the property from the current owner.

People who rent definitionally tend to not have much money, even in large groups, as people who... own buildings.

You theoretically could have something like a hybrid between a 'government owned housing' model and this model: 50 50 match, if the tenants can provide half the money/financing, the government provides the other half... or maybe it offers something like a tax rebate or something to the owner that is getting 'bought out', instead of directly giving them half the money...

A whole lot of things are possible.

Most people just don't think about it, because doing anything they've never heard of before 'is crazy' and 'will never work'.

And yes, as you say, de-financializing homes would go a long, long way to make prices more stable.

Limits on max price valuation increases or decreases in a given time span.

Limits on how much money going into buying a building can be financed, vs paid with actual cash on hand currency.

Some kind of structure that penalizes organizations that buy or sell huge numbers of properties that they haven't held for at least a decade.

Rework how property tax valuations work.

Peg a 'reasonable rent rate' to the area median income * sq footage of apartment, ignore location and amenities. If you are charging rent that is some threshold % above that? Landlord's tax obligation scales up. Also works in reverse, the government will subsidize via tax rebate landlords who offer cheaper rent.

(this makes 1000000x more sense than the government trying to literally purchase and then run a whole city district worth of property, to then make it 'affordable housing'. Its pegged around the median, it should thus net to roughly 0 expense or benefit to the government budget, but it disincentivizes luxury rent prices and directly uses the luxury property owner tax to subsidize affordable property owners)

There are many, many things that could be changed.